Comment by thebooktocome | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thebooktocome | Hacker News Reader

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The Nuremberg Code is about medical experimentation, not vaccination programs.

The Nuremberg Code is not really relevant to modern medical ethics, or even to the history of medical ethics--its authors plagiarized [1] half of it from the 1931 Guidelines for Human Experimentation [2]. The relevant standard these days is the seventh revision of the Declaration of Helsinki, by the World Medical Association.

No, the use of COVID-19 vaccines was not "experimental" [3]:

> COVID-19 vaccines used in practice and involved in vaccination mandates are either authorized or fully approved by national regulatory authorities. Hence, they are not experimental and not part of research, and thus not covered by the Nuremberg Code. Taking approved medicines prescribed or used as a matter of regular medical or public health practice does not constitute an experiment or research in any common understandings of the terms.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3121268/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guidelines_for_human_subject_r...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10127050/

Emergency use authorization is experimental.

Otherwise it wouldn't be "emergency use".

Here’s a simple metaphor to illustrate the difference, if we’re going to argue the meaning of terms of art by their dictionary definitions.

When Sully Sullenberger pulled off the Miracle on the Hudson, that was an emergency use of the airplane’s water landing capability.

It wasn’t experimental. Airbus designed a “ditching” button for the A320, they knew more or less what it would do, and the regulators (here the FAA) agreed that having such a capability was less risky than not having it, even if it wasn’t vetted and maintained at the same level of rigor as, e.g., the landing gear.

Therefore something can be “emergency use” without being “experimental”, even if we stick to the simple common meaning of both terms.

You are downplaying the role of an emergency use authorization. "Reasonable belief" sounds experimental to me. Otherwise they would've had all the information needed for FDA approval, it wouldn't have been predicated on belief, and it wouldn't have been labeled emergency use.

Why are you so adverse to accepting the reality of the situation?

"The process for issuing an EUA is different than an FDA approval. Under an EUA, the FDA authorizes uses of medical products based on a reasonable belief that the product may be effective based on the best evidence available at the time, without waiting for all the information that would be needed for an FDA approval."[1]

[1] https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/understanding...

> Why are you so adverse to accepting the reality of the situation?

Because your reality contradicts the evidence I’ve seen. Really, there’s a convincing, logical argument in Section 2.2 of that third link above about exactly this kind of equivocation on the meaning of experimental in the context of medicine.

I like that the difference between war crime and perfectly acceptable is a rubber stamp. Not like the covid vaccine was in any way rushed.

https://www.umms.org/coronavirus/covid-vaccine/testing

Calling this process a “rubber stamp” is disingenuous.

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